


Those Who Rise Up

by komiv



Series: For They Were Mortal [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Post-Dragon Age II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4730942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/komiv/pseuds/komiv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirkwall is a city in chaos, and it’s all Cullen can do to keep it from pulling him under, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Rise Up

The halls of the Gallows stank of blood and death for days after the battle, even after the last of the bodies were cleared out and burned. Someone had since removed Meredith’s petrified body from the courtyard, but lingering destruction was a poignant reminder of what happened. The pedestals empty of their statues both stung and haunted, a wound that refused to heal.

He tried not to think too much of the gaping stretch of rubble where the Chantry had once stood. With recovery efforts throughout the city still ongoing, most of the time he was able to focus on the task at hand: move this rubble, direct survivors to the nearest safe house, put one foot in front of the other.

It didn’t always work, but for a while it was enough.

Every leader the city might have turned to was gone: Dumar and his son dead in the Qunari uprising three years before, Meredith and Orisino dead by the Champion’s hand after turning on their own people.

The Champion herself had vanished too, escaped at his own allowance—a decision he knew he would answer for once the dust settled, once word of what happened reached the right ears.

 _Maker help us._ He was the highest ranking templar left in the city, with half of his forces dead or missing. Guard-Captain Aveline helped where she could, but the guard was stretched thin trying to restore order in a city at war with itself. It was only a matter of time before the tenuous truce they had managed to claim shattered once more.

A week had passed and they were still pulling bodies out of broken buildings, casualties from Chantry debris and fighting strung from Hightown to the Docks. Little was left of those who had been in the Chantry itself to even be identified.

Where grief didn’t hold fast the hearts of the survivors, there was anger; where there wasn’t anger, there was fear. A volatile mix of the three had already led to several altercations in the streets, barely broken up by an overtaxed guard.

Someone needed to do something, and the more eyes that looked to him in place of Meredith, the more he feared to fail them. He knew not all of the Order agreed with his decision to let Hawke and her companions go. Ser Karras had already spoken against him for letting the apostate and his accomplices escape. People needed someone tangible to blame and the Champion only made too fine a target.

“You let them go!” Karras had snarled. “They were right there and you _let them go_!”

No one mentioned Meredith’s actions in the courtyard, the glowing sword or the moving statues, how she attacked her own templars. As if ignoring it would change the truth hanging over them like a sword at a Harrowing.

The Rite of Annulment justified their actions by Chantry law, but the Knight-Commander had not been truly right at the end. Surely he was not the only one to recognize that. Had there been signs before that he might have seen if he’d not been focused so narrowly on threat from the mages? Thrask had noticed something, along with his fellows now dead on the Wounded Coast. Ser Thrask had been a good man before he fell in with blood mages, a good templar for all his faults.

Could they have intercepted Anders, too, before he acted out his plan? If their Knight-Captain had not so blatantly ignored the talk of a healer in Darktown for the sake of refugees he helped? That failure weighed as heavily as Meredith, if not more so. He had failed in his duty—they all had. Failed the people of Kirkwall who had trusted the templars to keep them safe.

Again he had failed, and he feared this time would not be the last. Feared he had already committed another mistake he could not undo.

The thoughts chased around his head as he worked to direct clean-up efforts, lurking behind the distraction of endless reports, ceasing only when he passed out in lieu of sleep. But other thoughts came then, dreams he didn’t dare remember, nightmares of days since past.

He never slept well, but neither did anyone else in Kirkwall. Not anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Another FTWM story for the pile, taking some looks at what's happening in Kirkwall following the mess that is the DA2 finale.


End file.
